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I need to watch some reference dvds and videos and I am in need of a good frame by frame viewer. Most of the players fail to do frame accuracy(kmp, vlc, Gom etc). And I do not want to convert whole dvd set to sequential tgas or pngs.I would like to scrub the videos back and forth as good as possible.

Not a player as such but able to read, edit and playback DVD, (and more).

For any MPEG source it just needs to be able to index it first, (which means the source needs to be on a writable drive), and then you can step by frame, key frame, black frame or just scroll back and forth using the slider.

Off to the right of the slider is a control wheel that allow you to step backwards/forwards at whatever rate you like, (from 1 frame every few seconds to a few times normal play rate), just click and pull it backwards or forwards.

As a bonus it's free, standalone and SMP aware.

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I'd suggest VideoReDo Plus, which is not just a player, though. It's a full featured MPEG-2 editor, but very fast and you can scroll by frames freely. You can run several instances to compare movies frame by frame, set bookmarks, etc.

I'm not sure, but probably the trial version doesn't allow to save movies after its expiration, however, the browsing functionality should remain. Anyway, you can try it for free.

I want to suggest mplayer, which is a rather simple but powerful mediaplayer. VLC and mplayer share a lot code; I prefer mplayer because it doesn't have a gui.

To view a film frame by frame just play it and pres ".", each "." will move to next frame.

mplayer has options to generate screenshots too, but I haven't used that feature yet so I can't say much about it. mencoder can be used to convert, or encode, from one format to another. I believe ffmpeg can do this as well.

It is a very simplistic if not cryptic media player. Which is fine by me because it does what I want: it plays any media I throw at it. Don't expect a usable GUI.

I just noticed that you need to view movies from DVD, not the individual MPG or VOB files, so in that case you'd need VideoReDo TVSuite, which is capable of importing the DVD.

Anyway, I'm not sure if players can do what you need--in my opinion the players allow to step frame by frame in forward direction only as they can't interpret the B-frames backwards, but if you need to get back they usually skip to the GOP start, i.e. the closest I-frame.

4wd I did not know about licencing problems that Vd was having. Thanks for letting me know, that should save my couple hours easily

It wasn't actually licensing problems, the original developer just made the decision not to implement to avoid any problems.

At this point I'm not sure if it's been implemented lately or not - the release notes imply it has MPEG-2/4 support since about version 1.6+ but my version 1.71 won't import a VOB complaining that it's possibly MPEG-2.

First problem was a dumb one. There was a failed idx file in the folder and Avidemux probably was trying to write over and was failing so it could not import the vob.Seond one was about appending files. It was asking me if I wanted to append multiple files for some reason. At first I clicked yes failed couple times. Choosing no leads to successful import,

thanks for the settings tip 4wd.

Btw here is a simple AHK script to use your mouse wheel for frame back and forth inside avidemux:)

First problem was a dumb one. There was a failed idx file in the folder and Avidemux probably was trying to write over and was failing so it could not import the vob.

Cool, glad you got it to work.

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Seond one was about appending files. It was asking me if I wanted to append multiple files for some reason. At first I clicked yes failed couple times. Choosing no leads to successful import,thanks for the settings tip 4wd.

If it sees VOBs that are part of the same VTS set, (eg. VTS_01_x), then it will ask if you want to append them - so you can import a whole movie off of a DVD without processing each VOB separately and then appending them.

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Btw here is a simple AHK script to use your mouse wheel for frame back and forth inside avidemux:)

;xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Avidemux xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

#IfWinActive Avidemux{

WheelDown::RightWheelUp::LeftReturn

}

Thanks, I tend to use the keyboard for fast navigation but this will come in handy for scrubbing over small sections.

I tend to use AVIDemux over all other editors now, especially for MPG4 encodes because it's SMP encoding is faster than any other program I've tried without resorting to command line encoders and their options.

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I do not need to control my anger ... people just need to stop pissing me off!

Use DGIndex on the VOB files to generate an index file (.d2v) - should take just a few minutes. With AviSynth installed Create a simple Avisynth script: line1) loadplugin("[Your Full Path Here] \dgdecode.dll") line 2) mpeg2source(".\your_d2v.d2v") -- note that DGIndex can create the .avs file for you... an .avs file is a simple text file with the .avs extension. Last, open that .avs file in video software - I'd recommend VirtualDub.

This will generate full frames from the [usually 14] partials every 1/2 second (NTSC), let you filter, resize etc., save entire or portions of video, including stills & image sequences, dynamically de-interlace and so on -- long story short you can view frame by frame, advancing with the arrow keys on your keyboard, or play the video, or jump anywhere in the video instantly with a click of the mouse.

The programs are free, very small, & DGIndex & VirtualDub have next to zero footprint on your PC. All 3 are also standards in video circles.

I've never used it, but I'd venture a guess that avidemux uses code from DGIndex that's pretty much the std for that sort of thing, used in all sorts of video apps & ft ends. Reason I mention it is you might well be able to do the same thing, without having the restriction of writable media. Since you use it you'd be the best judge of course, whether or not you could incorporate DGIndex d2v files in your avidemux projects. There's also a version for avc streams if that's of any interest.

RE: V/Dub... originally mpg2 codecs were all payware, & not necessarily cheap - then import became a non-issue pairing DGIndex & AviSynth. With Avisynth you can do tons of stuff not possible anywhere else - loads of pros use it - & combined with DGIndex mpg2 import just isn't/wasn't necessary... in fact almost any native import is inferior to the DGIndex methods. Loads of folks prefer to get mpg2 into apps like Prem Pro that way. Only with version 7 did Vegas begin to import mpg2 with quality & performance approaching DGindex on the time line [Vegas requires an extra step, either frameserving from V/Dub or using VFAPI on your .avs file to create a fake avi]

Outputting mpg2 is IMHO best handled with payware like TMPGEnc, CCE, ProCoder, MainConcept code etc, though there are a couple of free alternatives: Qenc & HCenc. V/Dub can either frame-serve to your encoding software, or there are ft ends that handle all of it for you, often incorporating AviSynth, DGIndex, V/Dub, HCenc etc.

Finally, and again if it's of interest, several apps including DGIndex can strip out the audio & video files from a VOB set. PGCDemux is another I often use. TMPGEnc also includes very good muxing in it's Mpeg Tools section [I *believe* everything but the mpg2 encoding is free]. Many programs will only import VOBs, .m2v mpg2 video streams, or muxed mpg mpg2 files, so if you need to convert without re-encoding it's not that much of a hassle.